The Obama administration will, for now, avoid a nomination fight over Elizabeth Warren by appointing her the interim head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She will have the title of special assistant to the president and will report jointly to Obama and to the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner. This decision will prevent Warren from entering the ‘cone of silence’ and allow her to be an open and vocal advocate for the bureau.
The decision does not preclude the possibility that Ms. Warren could eventually be named director, and at the least, she would play a pivotal role in deciding whom to appoint to the job, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the formal announcement.
What is this bureau going to do?
The bureau will have the authority to write and enforce new standards for mortgages, credit cards, payday loans and a wide array of other financial products, and the White House said it believed it was imperative that Ms. Warren promptly begin to shape that process.
Predictably, there are those on the left who want to spin this as some kind of sleight of hand move to marginalize Warren. Any such analysis is completely premature and it just reeks of petulance. The law allows the Treasury Department to set the bureau up, and they have deputized Warren to do that job. She won’t just report to Geithner, but also directly to the president, which gives her needed clout. And, while it is not clear that she will eventually be named the director, she will clearly have the best argument for being named director since she will have been serving as acting director for many months prior to any nomination.
The administration should be taken at their word on this. They see little upside to getting bogged down in a contentious nomination fight that would require Warren to go silent while the agency is being created. They want her to be able to talk up the bureau and to testify before Congress, which she wouldn’t be able to do if her nomination was pending.
And, even if she isn’t ultimately named the director, she will have the most influence over the the initial shape and direction of the bureau, which is probably the most important thing.
odd. this week, it’s good to avoid “a contentious nomination fight” and that “the most important thing” is that “she will have the most influence over the the initial shape and direction of the bureau”. but last week you wrote:
and you also wrote in July:
i don’t think those who are disappointed are being petulant. i think they expected, as you did, the president would “see this as the right fight at the right time to make up with the base and get them engaged for the electoral fight to come”. Does an unofficial advisory role, with maybe the potential to head the agency at some time in the indeterminate future really accomplish that?
To me, it looks like more wishy-washiness.
Well, I didn’t understand the law.
I was looking at it as an either/or scenario, but there is no need for a director at this point in time.
I wasn’t thinking about how valuable she could be as a spokesperson for the agency and the policy during the election season.
So, basically, the administration was smarter than me.
these are my first impressions by the way.
I do like the idea of her being able to promote the CFPB. But what I really want, at the end of the day, is for a strong and independent consumer advocate to be running the organization. if, in the end, this unofficial special advisor yadda-yadda winds up being window dressing, I’ll be annoyed.
I can’t see this as window-dressing, no matter what happens in the end. But I would like to see her confirmed as director. I think it will be easier to confirm her if she’s already kind of established, especially in a more conservative Senate. But, it might be the case that she simply can’t win any conservative votes. We’ll see. Regardless, so long as she is in charge of setting the bureau up, that’s the most important thing right now.
But, it might be the case that she simply can’t win any conservative votes.
There are only two Republicans votes likely for Warren and we all know who they are. The better question though is whether Ben Nelson(and the other DLC clowns) plus Chris Dodd would vote for her. This split-the-baby(as TPM called it) says that Obama doesn’t want to fight with Dodd and the others.
This is a pathetic reaction on your part which totally ignores the upside of this decision.
To paraphrase an email I got from a respected progressive organizer:
Obama could have nominated her which would have prevented her from speaking out or doing any actual work on the agency while Geithner was free to start building it any way he wanted.
Why would it prevent her from speaking out? Because it would hurt Richard Shelby’s fee-fees?
Oh, I get it you just want her to be nominated and then NOT to get confirmed?
I never did quite see how you nominate the head of an agency that doesn’t exist yet. This move makes perfect sense to me, and I don’t really understand your need to assume the worst.
If Obama had nominated her to be head of a still-nonexistent agency, what are the odds that the perpetual naysayers would be bitching about how he’d found a way to shut her up while giving her no real power?
Other than TNC (who I love), I haven’t seen any pundit out there on the liberal/progressive side concede that the administration is smarter than them. I admire that and respect you for saying that. I will say that a lot of the problems I have with the liberal/progressive pundits and commentators is that they consistently think that they are smarter than perhaps the most intelligent, tactically aware President there’s been in a long time.
As an aside, I loved this comment in the blog you link to above which to me encapsulates the ignorance of some of the so-called progressive side:
“I voted for Obama hoping for a positive change, but so long as his administration includes Geithner and Summers and leaves out (good) folks like Warren and Volker, Obama will continue to lose my support going forward…..”
bear in mind that this was in response to a story about how Warren was going to be PART of the Obama adminstration!
Who’s TNC?
I have often remarked that the Obama team is smarter than me. They are. They continually surprised me during the campaign by coming up with stuff that never occurred to me.
That doesn’t mean that they haven’t made some mistakes and done some dumb things. But they have a lot more imagination than I do, and it shows.
You don’t know who TNC is? Here is a refresher:
http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/
I know Coates, I just didn’t get the abbreviation.
Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Yes you have and I appreciate it. Obviously doesn’t mean they haven’t made mistakes but I tend to judge things in the round. They are after all just human and what I’m looking for isn’t perfection but someone who broadly shares my values and learns how to correct or deal with mistakes rather than worry constantly about making them.
It is wishy-washy. What I want to know from Boo(and the other cheerleaders) is: is there ever a good time to pick a fight with Republicans(and if needed … bankster stooges like Chris Dodd)?
Yep. Right now on the tax cuts.
Like Orszag, I want them to all expire, including the ones on the middle class (eventually, not now).
Unlike Orszag, I would not extend them all if all I can get is for the middle class.
So fight like hell for the middle class tax cuts, and if you can’t pass them without passing the ones for the rich, then fuck it. Don’t pass any of them.
Is that the only thing? And you are right about the taxes. We’ll see what happens in the end.
Just off the top of my head, the Recovery Act, the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd/Frank Act are major fights that split almost entirely on party lines that Obama and the Democrats won.
One of their best bills was bipartisan.
The Credit CARD Act of 2009 won ninety votes in the Senate. Here are the major provisions of that bill.
That is totally awesome legislation.
as i’ve said before, you don’t get credit for fixing what you broke to begin with. The list of democrats who supported the Consumer Protection and Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, which led to many of the credit card abuses banned above, is long.
You’ll go to any length to deny credit where it’s due. How did Obama break the credit card industry?
dude, you’re missing the analogy of the broken window, entirely.
when i say “what you broke to begin with” I mean that when the Democrats joined the Republicans to pass the bankruptcy reform bill of 2005, they BROKE existing protections for consumers, protections against predatory rates/usury, bankrupty protection from credit card debt, protections against losing your home, and the like.
i do NOT mean that they broke the credit card industry, i mean they BROKE rules that protected consumers, at the behest of credit card companies and banks.
the credit card reforms that recently passed essentially restore protections that the Senate, including at least 16 democrats, thought it was wise to do away with in 2005.
THAT is what i mean by “you don’t get credit for what you broke to begin with”.
i will give Obama credit though: he voted NO in 2005, and has lived up to that no vote as president. i do not, however, give the Senate a pat on the back, as they were complicit in fucking consumers.
What would be the point, exactly, of making a fight about a nomination to an agency that doesn’t yet exist, thereby shutting the nominee out of all public comment until after the election?
Warren will be in position to shape the agency now. Isn’t that better than being on the outside waiting for somebody else to hand it over to her? If Warren were the type that would just become a Geitner/Summers stooge once she’s in the administration, there would be something to worry about. But she’s not. And if she were, what was all the fuss about in the first place?
What I like and admire about Obama is that given the choice between the fight and actually getting something done, he invariably chooses the latter. Fights make you feel good, no doubt, but getting things done makes people’s lives better. A fight is easy to start, getting things done is much much harder.
So, is it always an either/or proposition? That’s a false choice and I’m calling you and your merry band on it! Obama can’t fight and get things done? The Dems can’t fight and get things done? (And put that tired list away because I and many, many others are completely unmoved.) So, wtf are they there for? Glittering parties and golf outings with the blue-blood criminal element? Yes, he chooses not to fight, which still leads to nothing being done. Then we’re told to shut up or Sarah Palin will be president. At this point, I say let her become president. Palin and Obama both hate liberals and wear that hatred as a badge of honor. Obama is already enacting Republican policy after Republican policy–Democratic death squads! Gay bigotry! And torture! But hush about that because it goes against the Holy Obama narrative–and is getting away with it because of his cult of personality. Call me petulant because I didn’t get my pony (or whatever childish disparagement that’s the soup du jour that makes you feel better) all you want. It doesn’t matter anymore. Voting for Dems right now is voting for the dissolution of SocSec. And when that’s finally done, Obama will whine about how we’re to all sit down, shut up and “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Then, Boo will stand up in righteous indignation and say that Obama is right because Republicans made him do it and chide me because I wasn’t loyal enough or loud enough with my effusive praise. But this site doesn’t want to highlight that truth right now because the fight is just so perilous and the parties are so very different. That’s a crock!
The choice is between decrepit, incompetent impotence and violent rage.
This may be the stupidest comment I’ve ever read here at the Frog Pond.
Maybe here at the Frog Pond, but I just read one over at HuffPost (I read HP so you don’t have to!) that is such a magnificent example of Firedoglakery, I simply cannot resist quoting it here:
“ocoastperson 17 minutes ago (1:17 PM)
158 Fans
“BRILLIANT OBAMA MOVE: Now he has SHUT WARREN UP PUBLICLY.
“And, she has NO POWER AT ALL.
“And, he has FOOLED HIS BASE, AGAIN!!!
“And, he has pleased Wall Street (who do not want her in the director position where she could actually cause them some trouble), where they understand advisers are CYA positions that can easily be ignored and can accomplish nothing.
“Advisor means nothing. Advisors can do nothing, not even force themselves into meetings where the subject they are “advising” on is being discussed or decisions made. Since Geithner is known to dislike Warren, he may only choose to meet with her infrequently, may not bring up key issues to her, and may ignore anything that happens to go whizzing by his ears from her mouth.
“Ever been on an “Advisory Committee” to the government?. I have been on two, to local governments. Advice taken; Zero. Hours spent traveling and listening to self-serving blather: = hours spent attending meetings.
“Brilliant move for those political wizards at Obamaland, sad day for the rest of us.
Sounds like a GOP troll, but often it’s hard to tell.
As reported, it’s not exactly a position serving on an advisory committee.
No, it’s not. But that doesn’t stop these jerks from making stuff up.
I mean jeebuz, how is anyone supposed to respond to that comment which is about an incoherent as anything I’ve seen.
No-one is saying it’s always an either or but obviously the premise of my comment was in the context of an either/or choice. I am not sure what your reference to a “list” is but Obama has fought plenty during his administration. If you don’t think so, you just haven’t been following these things closely or more likely you just don’t want to know.
Just as a point of interest, if you had your way, who would the President be? I mean who has shown the “fight” you so want sufficiently for you to vote for them?
Delongo, let me suggest there are different ways of fighting.
Further, let me suggest that the radical right would like nothing better than for you (and me and Obama and everyone else on the left) to conclude that our only options are “decrepit, incompetent impotence and violent rage”.
Back in the 1980s, when Obama was just learning about community organizing, he would have learned about anger. He would have learned that it can explode into violent rage and it can implode into apathetic defeat. And he would have learned about “cold anger”—anger that is reflected on, discussed, digested…and then used as fuel for disciplined, effective, powerful action. (Check out Mary Beth Rogers’ book, “Cold Anger”, about organizing in Texas in the 1980s.)
Most of us forget that before the tea partiers destroyed the vestiges of moderate Republicanism, Obama started the job for them back in 2008-09 by coopting Powell, Hagel, McHugh, LaHood, Specter, etc.
One more thing about fighting: as the first Black president, Obama has virtually no room for public displays of anger or bravado. He’s like Jackie Robinson as a rookie for the Dodgers. He’s got to fight a different way.
I smell a sock puppet, fully paid for by the Republican Party.
Sometimes you need to pick a fight, especially in politics. Sometimes you need to remind your opponents on who is boss.
The Republicans can’t govern, can’t manage an economy, hell, they can’t win a war (and probably don’t want to since it would cut the flow of war profiteering). But what they CAN do is frame issues, game the system, tinker with arcane house and senate rules, and generally wreak havoc even when they’re in the minority.
It’s easy, then, to see that Obama and his team will be resorting to these sorts of equally clever maneuvers to game the system. To me it’s the action of someone who wants to get shit done and really rub it in their faces as they sit by, helpless.
If the administration had wanted to neutralize Warren, they would have nominated her straight up. Then no one would hear a peep from her for months and months on end as the Republicans blocked and held her confirmation. There will be plenty more of this gamesmanship going forward as the margins in the house and senate shrink, and Obama plays to win.
I blame Obama. Wait… dammit.
Are you on crack? The Republicans didn’t need any help when you have assholes like Chris Dodd being the banksters stooge.
Oh that’s right, I forgot that Dodd and Bayh hadn’t announced their lobbying gigs with Republican firms yet.
Bayh is a Republican in all but name. And I guess you haven’t been paying attention to Dodd lately.
Um, you do know the Dodd/Bayh remark was snark, don’t you? Put down that pipe….
Calvin, you are a broken record at this point. Nothing Obama or the national Democrats do could ever, ever please you, and it shows. Some of your gripes have merit but it’s impossible to take anything you say seriously since it’s all leavened with this automatic, perfect discontent. You undercut your arguments and remove yourself from serious consideration. What’s the point of even reading your comments anymore when everyone knows exactly what you’re going to say?
Could be a good thing for Warren advocates, could be a bad thing.
I half-way opposed the interim nomination because it’s highly likely that she won’t be the head of the CFPA. Not that she was my first choice anyway, but I don’t need to hear the left kvetching when she doesn’t get placed at the head when this interim stuff is done with.
Why on earth would she not be your first choice? Are you against consumer advocacy?
Let me tell you something. From a progressive point of view (meaning from the point of view of urban activists) there is nothing more important than having this agency crackdown on payday loans, check cashing joints, income tax preparer’s usury, and rip-off mortgages and credit cards. That’s basically what ACORN was created to fight.
payday loans – heartbreaking
Certainly not, I’m just not a fan of Warren with her last job, which is sad because I liked her before she was nominated.
We’ll see if this goes better than last time. It should, because last time I felt she overstepped the line of what her actual job was, but this time her overstepping onto that line should fall in line with consumer advocacy.
What last time job are you talking about? Are you saying the same thing about Obama and overstepping the mandate of the Catfood Commission?
Heh, that commission is probably one of the few places I disagree with BooMan. He can take his commission and shove it right up his ass. Cuts in SS aren’t needed, raising the retirement age isn’t needed, both would be harmful to the country.
St. Ronnie raided that fund to front his tax cuts, and I’ll be damned to see an already regressive system be used as a tool for the rich to steal from the poor and middle class. SS is the only retirement a good chunk of the population has.
Her last job was the Oversight Panel. She overstepped her mandate more times than I can count. The panel had no job in policy making, and she kept acting like it did. I thought Elizabeth Warren was a good selection for the Chair of the Oversight Panel, because I thought she would provide vigorous oversight, and would be effective in preventing waste/fraud in the allocation of TARP funds. But it’s increasingly clear that Warren just wanted to use the Oversight Panel to advance her own personal policy agenda.
But it’s increasingly clear that Warren just wanted to use the Oversight Panel to advance her own personal policy agenda.
That’s called politics!! Besides, it’s nice to have someone fight for the people for once.
Exactly, and she shouldn’t have been politicizing her position. It wasn’t her place, even if what she was saying was correct.
It’s the same as Patraeus talking about the Qur’an burning. Maybe he’s correct, but it’s not his place to speak.
Warren’s personal policy agenda was specifically why she was named to the Oversight Panel. The politics of TARP was in the interplay between Geithner and Warren, by design.
It’s amazing that when Obama started naming his cabinet the Village was abuzz with the “team of rivals” narrative. One of the few cases in which I think they were on to something.
The way that Warren and Geithner have operated on TARP is the way that one would suspect a team of rivals to operate. Her personal policy agenda was Obama’s agenda. Geithner’s concern about relationships with Wall Street was also Obama’s concern. The result is that there is stronger financial industry regulation than there would have been and that the TARP funds have not been the fiscal black hole that folks expected.
And Warren’s testimony to Congress about TARP oversight issues was a part of the negotiations with Congress about the shape of the final financial industry regulation bill.
You amaze me. The only thing I can think of that you might call “overstepping” are her efforts to point out that TARP as constituted was not sufficient to solve the problems it was touted to address. Even Obama admits that that’s the case.
Talk about damned if you do and damned if you don’t. If Warren had kept her nose in the books and just followed the protocol, ignoring its deep deficiencies, she’d have been attacked as just another nearsighted apparatchik. If she takes her mandate as including the broader problem you attack her for “pushing her personal agenda”. What’s so great about obsessively working to make the perfect round peg without happening to mention that it was supposed to fit a square hole?
Others on the left may have done that, but I wouldn’t have been one of them. I’m fairly consistent in my criticisms.
Yep, what you point out is overstepping her mandate, just part of it. Why is she talking about alternatives to TARP instead of doing her job?
Or when she invited the Swedes to testify before the Senate. The Oversight Panel has no policymaking function whatsoever. Its mandate is oversight of existing policy. It’s wildly inappropriate for the Oversight Panel to be commenting on prospective banking policy.
Her reports have been nothing but political hit-pieces.
Again, she could be a good mold for the CFPA by doing this. It’s just that I disagree with how she handled her last job.
When she testified before the Senate about the financial industry reforms, was she testifying as head of the Oversight Committee or as a member of the Harvard faculty who had written extensively about financial consumer protection? She was both. The Oversight Panel job was ancillary to her job at Harvard.
The Democratic Party according to Sullivan (commenting on the lack of Party support for healthcare):
Yeah, that part: ‘paralyzed . . .’. Warren is just the latest example.
what do you expect when we can’t get party unity(see Chris Dodd and the Blue Dogs/DLC)
It’s the biggest shift in social legislation in four decades.
Some observations:
Playing the political game creatively IS picking a fight. Think of it a different way – if Bush had made a back door appointment of an agency head by making them a special advisor that didn’t require confirmation, and then given said advisor the portfolio of writing the rules and regulations of the agency, would we have been happy progressives and thought he had backed down on us? I don’t think so. So I hope that is what Obama has done in this case, and I am sad because future Republicans will be much more willing to do it than Democrats are (think recess appointments).
I like this move if it actually occurs (Warren gets an executive branch paycheck) As TarheelDem stated this is the point where the main thrust of this agency will be created and she literally wrote the book.
Nomination without appointment was always the STFU for Warren but it didn’t happen that way. Kudo’s when proved to be true.
The interplay between having dual reporting paths cannot have been lost on Geithner, Summers, Rubin, et al. They have a plan to protect there friends by fixing the bank balance sheets and in theory Warren is opposed to their plan. We will have to wait and see what happens here.
Reporting to the President directly. Not bad. Another part I like reported apparently from huffpo via kos:
And there is obviously no reason he can’t appoint her.
If you take this at face value, it looks like a brilliant move.
And apparently from Dodd’s “send me a nomination” response one that cuts off the Wall Street caucus at the pass.
That also occurred to me. This move just settles a whole lot of sausage making issues and lets Warren get down to work.
She can even do a little more PR before the election and the Dems don’t have to make the sausage until after the midterms.
Here’s the thing, if the Administration hadn’t spent the entire time kicking the left in the teeth every single chance it’s gotten, I might believe him. As it is, I’ll wait and see until we actually get a nomination. Or is he going to let another office languish instead of recess appointing people? The economy sucks because he did that (the Fed governors).
Oh give me a break. Obama and his administration have been working their butts off trying to get a progressive agenda (more progressive than any administration for decades) and because they didn’t get it all suddenly progressives have been kicked in th teeth. It’s all topsy turvy. the people who have been doing the kicking are the so called progressive pundits who have at every turn said not good enough.
I don’t think there is going to be a nomination of anyone before November. And if the rumor/trial balloon/leak is true, she is going to have a lot of backing for her ideas about how to put the bureau together. And she can start tomorrow.
Well, truth be told, she’s been working with the White House on this ever since the legislation was passed. That is very clear from her remarks at Netroots Nation. And one of the ideas she floated there is using the internet to drive the drafting of the regulations.
Recess appointments right now end at the end of this session of Congress, which is December. That is a factor to consider. She would have to be reappointed again in January and time in the Senate would be taken up with either her appointment or some other issue.
One of the problems is that the left has been played by the DC rumor sheets, especially Politico, which is not a neutral observer.
The Fed is not why the recovery has sucked and his appointments would have had little effect on Fed operations. Joe Lieberman, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins are why the recovery has sucked. When interest rates are effectively zero, the Fed has little leverage over the economy. It has made money available to banks, but they have not used it to extend loans; they have actually been underwriting the deficit at 3% interest. Given that, it would make sense but would not get through this Congress to borrow a trillion dollars at 3% and invest in infrastructure, starting with a lot of deferred maintenance. The Recovery Act barely scratched the surface of deferred maintenance.
This is quite simply dead wrong.
The Fed is a huge part of the reason the economy sucks. Have you read DeLong, or Krugman or Rubini? A Fed Board of governors determine to reduce unemployment could do just that and enough to be significant. But they won’t. And Obama has not appointed anyone to the board, people who could join Bernanke (who has spoken on this issue, it’s clear he KNOWS what to do) in actually doing things to reduce unemployment.
Yes he has. Obama has nominated THREE people, all the way back in April. I even gave an analysis of them on this very board (I think they’re good nominations, one of which was suggested by Dean Baker).
Are you that blinded in your hatred of the administration that you just don’t see what’s going on?
What tools could they use? Helicopters for dropping money from the sky? Sure, but like Atrios, I don’t think this will do much of anything.
Exactly. He’s nominated them and let them sit. Why no recess appointment? Isn’t it important to get them on there right away?
I’m not blinded by anything.
What tools could they use? Here’s the latest primer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/economy/19view.html?_r=2&ref=business
I have read DeLong, Krugman, and what Roubini is freely available. All three point out the limits of Friedmanian goosing of the money supply to stimulate employment. The Fed can buy and sell T-bills, set reserve requirements for banks, and provide money through the Fed Discount window to banks. That is all they can do. If the banks are not lending money because of lack of demand, there is nothing besides jawboning that the Fed can do about it.
My point about borrowing a trillion dollars at 3% for infrastructure investment stands. That would pump $3-5 trillion into the economy after the multiplier and by creating needed infrastructure would lower the cost of doing business in the future. The income generated by that investment would return maybe 15% of that ($450-750 billion) back to the IRS in the first year (if it is all spent in the first year). Which would reduce reduce the deficit to $700 billion – $ 1 trillion. That makes Gates’s plan to cut $100 billion from DoD over 5 years look damn puny.
Kevin Drum said it best:
If George Bush had done something like this we’d all be gnashing our teeth about how he and Karl Rove were so committed to their base that they were once again cleverly bending the rules to evade Democratic opposition and why can’t wussy Democrats ever act like that too? Well, now one is. So bravo. Given the realities of Republican subjugation to whatever the Chamber of Commerce wants, this is a good solution.